143 Million People May Soon Become Climate Migrants, World Bank Warns

Diatoms: Algae in glass houses

Check out my new post! 

http://becausephytoplankton.blogspot.com/2018/09/diatoms-algae-in-glass-houses.html

Mid Air Mid octopus

Marine Life of the Maritime Provinces, Canada

After months of work and waiting, here is at long last the full MARS commission. MARS (Marine Animal Response Society) is active in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and is called upon whenever a marine creature is found dead or in distress. These illustrations will be used to educate their volunteers and assist in making species identifications during strandings or at sea.

With 42 separate illustrations, this is my largest project to date - quite a load of work! But it was an absolute pleasure to do. I got to paint animals I have never painted before, as well as revisit some old friends. The diversity of species found in this one area is impressive and made for varied painting.

I’m pretty pleased seeing them all together like this, and I hope you’ll enjoy them too! 

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Alone in the world is a little catshark 🦈

This is one of the three deep-sea catshark species found in the Northeast Pacific, the longnose catshark, Apristurus kampae. They are found at depths ranging from 180 to 1,888 meters (590 to 6,500).

Catsharks are bottom feeders and are most active at night, often sleeping in groups during the day and hunting at night.

Before

Dad: Money  

Mom: Host family, packing enough, and safety  

Me: all of the above and traveling outside the U.S., social norms, language barrier, academic environment, courses, people, and anything and everything that I forgot to mention.  

Above, I have listed my parents' and my own anxieties and fears about leaving the United States for the coming semester. I can still hardly believe that I am already a junior in college and I am about to begin this incredible yet also terrifying experience in one week. The entire process, from applying to study abroad through Susquehanna's GO Office and through IFSA-Butler to everything I have done since to prepare myself for this semester abroad is entirely new to me and my family.  

The same is true when I was applying to colleges, scholarships, and getting ready to leave for college. Since neither of my parents and my older brother went to college, I did not have any help from my family during my college application process, unlike some of my old high school friends. I never really thought about it during the process. Ever since late middle school and throughout all of high school, I was very academically independent. So when it came to applying to colleges, nothing change. I had a bit of help from my high school guidance counselor, but otherwise, I did everything on my own.  

Preparing to leave for college, however, was a slightly different case. Not only did I have to pack material items, but I tried to mentally and emotionally prepare myself for an experience that I really did not know much about. I did not grow up with stories of my parents' college experiences. Sure, I had older high school friends that went to college, but I never stayed in touch enough to hear about a full college experience. Many people say that college was the best four years of their lives, but aside from stereotypical representations of college, I did not know what I was in for.  

The same is true about studying abroad. All of my peers who have done it have said it was one of the best, if not the best, experience of their lives.  Sure, I have also heard stories, but for the most part, I do not know a lot about what I am in for. It's true that Susquehanna's Pre-departure class and IFSA-Butler have given me a lot of advice on what to do to prepare myself for this experience, but there are still so many things that I probably don't even know I will encounter. And I realize that is one point of the experience, but it does not bring comfort to someone who likes to plan out different aspects of their life every few months.  

All of the information-packed documents and packets that I've received from IFSA-Butler have been extremely helpful in quelling many of my anxieties, but I still have many more. And again, I know the point is that I will have to figure things out for myself, at this moment in time, it is still unnerving. On the contrary, six months from now, I bet I will feel just the opposite.  

Oh, have I forgotten to mention the questions? Oh the questions. Like me, my parents want to know what I am in for to comfort their own nerves, but like preparing for college, I simply cannot answer most of them or I can only answer them just after I find an answer to my own question that I posed.  

So a week from leaving, I've started packing (keep IFSA-Butler's packing list handy), and have most of my official documents in order. I get more anxious every day, but I know that what I am about to embark on will be an amazing experience.

The Great Escape!

One of the biggest threats to sea turtles, such as the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) pictured here, is being accidentally caught and killed in fishing nets. Trapped in a net, the turtles are dragged through the water with no access to the surface to breathe, causing them to drown.

To address this problem, NOAA Fisheries worked with the shrimp trawling industry to install escape hatches into their nets called Turtle Excluder Devices, or TEDs. A crosshatch of bars in the middle of the net create a grid large enough for small shrimp to pass through, but not turtles and other large animals. When they hit the grid, they can then swim out through a hole in the net and escape.

Before TEDs were installed, an estimated 70 to 80 percent of turtle strandings on beaches were caused by shrimp nets. But since they were installed by U.S. shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1980s, strandings caused by shrimp nets are estimated to be down by at least 44 percent.

Photo: NOAA

Changing main blog now. Everything before this is my study abroad experience in Costa Rica